Black Plague wrote:
Blood 1.21 (one unit whole blood) freezes when the main menu shows up.
Welcome to the NT-based version of Windows. It doesn't help that BLOOD is a BUILD-based game (if you search the board using the word BUILD, you'll see it's one of the more difficult-to-run titles).
Without vdmsound it runs, but the sound is very scratchy and skips alot, and whenever a looping sound is heard or a gore splat happens it slows to a crawl.
XP has "built-in" SoundBlaster emulation, but it's poor. Try following my step-by-step guide (it covers BUILD games in general).
Running BUILD games on NT/2000/XP
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(Presuming the games are already installed)
1st, you need to try getting them to run with the absolute minimum needed. Go into setup. Set both "Sound FX Card" and "Music Card" to "None" (Redneck games might not have the "Music Card" option). Go to screen setup and choose 320 x 200 (Normal Mode). (Note: The Redneck games normally don't use this mode as it is just too chunky and will warn you of that. Ignore the warning. You're testing here.)
Try this for each of the games. Try starting them up, make choices from game menus, start up a game, etc... The main thing you're looking for here is basic functionality without lockups. If that works,...
(NOTE: NOLFB is available in the RESOURCES section of the board, it may or may not help with your card)
2nd, Go back to setup and choose a VESA video mode like 640x480 or 800x600. Copy NOLFB.COM (Ken Silvermans's VESA fix) to each of the game directories (or to a common OS path). Open a command prompt, go the game directory. Run NOLFB.COM, then run the game's executable. You should get back the same performance and responses as with 320x200. If that works...
(NOTE: NOLFB.COM dies the instant it's command prompt is closed. So don't just click it, then click the game. You can also create a batch file to do the same thing.)
3rd, Here it starts to get unpleasant. NT doesn't process audio like DOS...at all.
If you're running NT or Win2K, "I feel your pain".
You have 2 choices:
Dual-Boot (the better option)
or
Hack the game with Cli2Nop
(Provide link with Cli2Nop info)
If you're running XP, you luck out as XP has a (primitive) built-in form of SoundBlaster emulation. (We'll get to VDMSound later...).
Go into the audio portion of setup and choose "Sound Blaster or Compatible" with these for the other settings:
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Current Interrupt [ 5 ]
Current 8-bit DMA [ 1 ]
Current 16-bit DMA [ 5 ]
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Choose 1 or 2 for the number of voices, Mono Sound, 8 or 11KHz Mixing Rate. Save your settings and run the game.
If it's working properly, you should have running BUILD games with sound on XP. Sounds terrible doesn't it? Try choosing General MIDI for your "Music Card" at port 330, that should use the OS's wavetable for music.
Now you need to install Vlad's VDMSound program.
VDMSound v2.04 at http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vd...load/index.html
Install it, then copy the files from the 2.04 Update zipfile at
http://vdmsound.sourceforge.net/files/
on top of the original files (wherever you installed them).
Then download and install the GUI Launcher VDMSLaunchPad.v1.0.0.7, also at :
http://vdmsound.sourceforge.net/files/
Also, change the Audio IRQ for each game to 7 (this is VDMSound's default).
Log off, Log on and you should be ready to go.
Test out your games with VDMSound. Gradually increase your audio setting to higher quality settings until they make a significant (negative) impact on the game, then move them back just a bit.
That should be it. While Ken has fixed the video problem, audio performance under XP is still consistently lower than DOS or Win9x, so don't expect good performance with all the audio settings maxed out.
Once everything's running smoothly, you can go into the .VLP file that VDMSound created for your game and adjust some properties like choosing the GS-Wavetable for MIDI music and turning on the CD-ROM compatibility option if needed.
